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#132152 - 08/30/04 09:04 PM
Re: Rabbit-Tobacco
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Wordwind
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Piedmont Region of Virginia, U...
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"Gnaphalium obtusifolium"? Well, then, I was correct in my first surmise of the correct genus and species if your Alabamian friends are correct.
Thanks a lot, Milo. I'll print this out for my team to do with what they will--agreeing or still disagreeing. It's all part of the process--and I don't mind lengthy processes.
Harper Lee wasn't particularly brilliant botanically in Mockingbird, although the gifts she did possess in writing her one and only novel were impressive. She calls the oaks around the county courthouse "live oaks" (Quercus virginiana) when, in fact, they are a variety of water oak (Quercus nigra), but I doubt there is much interest in this kind of writer's peccadillo.) The fact that she can take such subjects as extreme racial prejudice, rape, and a problematical court system and cause one to smile and laugh throughout the novel (especially that provision of many warm smiles) is a testimony to her creative gifts. I wouldn't mind at all if she had, in fact, misnamed every plant in the book--it would simply give the scholars something to be busy with to earn their keep. And you know what James Joyces had to say about the scholars.
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#132157 - 09/03/04 03:19 PM
Re: Rabbit-Tobacco
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Jackie
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Louisville, Kentucky
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Well, let me know. And yes, I believe the Google things, at least the images, are brought up by however they're titled; so if someone has a picture of real tobacco, say, and posts it as rabbit tobacco, then it's going to get a hit as rabbit tobacco. No guaranteeing that all these titlers have been correct.
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#132159 - 09/04/04 09:11 AM
Re: Rabbit-Tobacco
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Wordwind
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Piedmont Region of Virginia, U...
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The teacher in the biology department I talked to yesterday knows mostly about woody plants, but he gave me the name of another teacher who specializes in herbaceous plants. Next week will be a little crazy with school's opening for students, but I'll try to track him down and see whether he can recognize the photos. As I was talking to the 'woody plant biologist' yesterday, another teacher from the history dept. overheard our conversation about rabbit-tobacco and immediately began to recount the time in his childhood when friends and he had smoked rabbit-tobacco. I said, "Well, at least it has medicinal properties!"
What I'd really like to do at some point is write to Harper Lee and let her know what a lark this has been trying to track down the rabbit-tobacco in Mockingbird. My mother says it used to grow all about Dinwiddie County, Virginia, but she hasn't seen it for years. Wonder why?
An aside: The most recent studies in educational theory are stressing the importance of students finding a personal interest hook into studies to investigate as throughly as possible, building webs between new subject areas, deepening knowledge of areas that are of personal interest, and making as many connections between areas investigated and areas in curriculum. I'll use my own interest in botany to demonstrate to my ninth graders a model for their own investigations of areas from Mockingbird. The possibilities offered by that novel are many and rich. Our final product will be an illustrated Mockingbird lexicon from each of my three ninth grade classes.
At first glance, it might seem that this kind of investigation of rabbit-tobacco trivializes the content of Mockingbird, but actually, in presenting this example to my classes, I'll address:
The descriptive details of the Radley yard: specific details in the weeds Ms. Lee chose to place there (i.e., rabbit-tobacco and the noxious weed Johnson grass);
Open-ended questions of what these two details might suggest about the appearance of a 'swept yard'--and how the reader might visualize such a yard; how community members might react to such a yard, including adults' reactions as opposed to that of children;
How Lee's use of such a yard ties into the repeated themes in the novel: poverty, prejudice, the oppression of the pariah, etc.
In other words, even with the mention of two specific details, such as Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco, much can be suggested. And I hope this will impress upon my students that in their own writing, specific details will add depth.
The other point of fascination to me is what the reader brings to a work of literature. Perhaps Lee simply used Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco because that is what she had seen in bleak-looking yards in her own Monroeville--and nothing more. Perhaps she herself used them to suggest a yard with weeds--a yard that lacked tender-loving care and nothing more. And perhaps my own tendency to take connections as far as I can when considering themes in a novel causes me to think of connections Lee never herself considered. Well, that's exciting, I think. I believe readers create novels in their own reading that the writer herself or himself didn't visualize while writing the work because readers bring information into the work that the writer may have not been privy to. And that is very exciting because it makes novels burst with new life. However, this kind of thinking I will probably not touch on with my ninth graders because it is most likely too abstract. I'll share it with you all, however, because we tend to take topics here in so many directions.
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#132160 - 09/04/04 10:34 AM
Bumwado Cedarettes
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Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 619
grapho
addict
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addict
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 619
Carpal Tunnel Country
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another teacher from the history dept. overheard our conversation about rabbit-tobacco and immediately began to recount the time in his childhood when friends and he had smoked rabbit-tobaccoReminds me of the time when a bunch of us 15 year olds at summer camp started to smoke something we called "Bumwado Cedarettes". We took strips of bark off the cedar trees which were everywhere and ground them up in our hands into something that looked like tobacco. Then we hand-rolled them in what was known as "bumwad" from the Kibos and lit them up. And I do mean we "LIT" them up. When the flame hit the bumwad, they flared like a butane lighter on wide open gas. But then they would settle out to a raspy smoke that lasted perhaps 5 minutes or more. Voila! Bumwado cedarettes.  It was more of a style than a substance thing, you know. It was a little disconcerting to see all the dust come out of the cedar strips when we ground them up. But that was in the days before we knew anything about all the crap in regular tobacco. No-one's ever died of a "Bumwado Cedarette", as far as I know. And no durn government ever put a tax on it. Hell, no tabaccky company ever made a puff of profit from our cedarettes. And there ain't a billboard nowheres boostin' them to kids.
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